Friday, September 09, 2005

Because we assume, unreflectively, that temporal well-being is a necessary constituent of happiness (or even the whole of it) , we also suppose that Job's losses undermine or destroy his happiness. Consequently, we wonder how God could count as good if he allowed these things to happen to a good person such as Job, or we take stories of undeserved suffering to constitute evidence for thinking there is no God. Aquinas, on the other hand, begins with the conviction that neither God's goodness nor his existence are in doubt, either for the characters in the story of Job or for the readers of that story. Therefore, on his view, those who go astray in considering sufferings such as Job's do so because, like Job's comforters, they mistakenly suppose that happiness and unhappiness are functions just of things in this life. And so Aquinas takes the book of Job to be trying to instill in us the conviction that there is another life after this one, that our happiness lies there rather than here, and that we attain to that happiness only through suffering. On Aquinas's view, Job has more suffering than ordinary people not because he is morally worse than ordinary, as the comforters assume, but just because he is better. Because he is a better soldier in the war against his own evil and a better servant of God's, God can give him more to bear here; and when this period of earthly life is over, his glory will also be surpassing.

I find this sort of argument very puzzling. So the conclusion we should draw from the failure of big government to take proper preventative actions in the case of New Orleans is...we need more big government? Somehow it doesn't seem quite plausible. And it's worth pointing out that on libertarian principles government money should be spent on (1) necessary essentials to protect the survival and rights of citizens; and (2) adjudication of apparent conflicts in rights. It really does seem that something like a flood wall would fall under (1), while most of the demands on government money that outcompeted issues like flood walls (for many, many years, regardless of whether taxes were cut or not) would not fall under either (1) or (2). The primary constraint libertarianism, as such, puts on government action is one of justification: the government must justify its action as necessary. Hey, wait, that sounds almost like something that would be implied by the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, which limit federal government action along those lines; obviously it must be crazy.

My point here is not to defend libertarianism (I am not a libertarian, despite some sympathies); nor is it to deny that some libertarians are insane (is there a political party without insane people?). Rather, it's just that this seems a weird argument. Flood walls are something relatively easy to justify on libertarian principles, in a way that (say) a war in Iraq is not. Actually, the catastrophe is a good reason to say that libertarians are right on one thing, at least: government needs to put essentials first. Libertarians go further and say that it needs to focus on essentials only, with which one may disagree; but they are certainly right about putting essentials first. Building a bigger government that continues to have bad priorities would be an utterly insane response.

1. Formal Necessity (e.g., on a Euclidean plane, the angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles)

2. Material Necessity (e.g., such-and-such material puts such-and-such constraints on what can be done with it)

Extrinsic Necessity

1. Necessity of the End (e.g., In order to keep living, it is necessary to eat)

2. Necessity of Compulsion (e.g., Such-and-such cause constrains the result in such-and-such way)

This can be applied to the question of the viability of determinism. I have come across determinists who puzzle over why it's usually referred to as causal determinism, since the necessity is one of logical implication. I think this is an odd thing to say. Logical implication only represents the necessity; it tells us that it is there. What it does not do is tell us why we believe the necessity to be there in the first place, and that is really what is always at issue in the question of whether any form of determinism is true. If determinism is the position that, given the initial state, the final state must follow, then the sort of necessity involved can't be material necessity - initial state and final state aren't related in that way. It can't be necessity of end, because the implication goes the wrong way (because it's an end-means necessity: given the final state, the initial state follows; but determinism requires the reverse). Further, necessity of end allows for alternative possibilities, which is why it hasn't usually been regarded as an issue in the free will debate. So this leaves only formal necessity and necessity of compulsion. For formal necessity to do the work determinism needs, there must be some intrinsic principle uniting initial and final states that makes the link between them necessary; a universal determinism, such as arises in the debate over freedom of will, requires that this principle not only make the link necessary, but that it apply to all relevant states (universal) and do so necessarily (if it is contingent we seem to have moved the necessity back to necessity of compulsion). So if formal necessity is to undergird universal determinism, there has to be something about states themselves that requires they be linked in this way. As determinism is usually formulated, the only conditions that are plausible candidates are space and time, which certainly don't seem to constrain things in this way. So while a formal determinism is perhaps possible, it would need considerably more defense than most determinists have been willing to make. So the necessity of determinism would appear to be a necessity of compulsion, i.e., a necessity due to the causes involved.

Icy shards burn like myriad cold fires, small and bitter and pricking,biting like fragments of blade, icy steel,forged in the smithies of winter.The crystals catch the light,cold stars captured in glassy prisons,burning with light and chill breezes,the Arctic in my hand, stinging it by nature,wounding me in war (winter is the soldier)and drawing blood with bright, chill light.

As can be seen, the poem is intended to evoke a mental picture of ice by appealing to the most salient senses (sight and especially touch).

Grief

Icy shards burn like myriad cold fires, small and bitter and pricking,biting like fragments of blade, icy steel,forged in the smithies of winter.The crystals catch the light,cold stars captured in glassy prisons,burning with light and chill breezes,the Arctic in my hand, stinging it by nature,wounding me in war (winter is the soldier)and drawing blood with bright, chill light.

This poem, of course, is very different; it attempts to give a characterization of grief through an objective correlate, namely ice, and seeks to identify several aspects in which ice is (as it were) grief-like. A much more metaphorical poem.

Logic

Icy shards burn like myriad cold fires, small and bitter and pricking,biting like fragments of blade, icy steel,forged in the smithies of winter.The crystals catch the light,cold stars captured in glassy prisons,burning with light and chill breezes,the Arctic in my hand, stinging it by nature,wounding me in war (winter is the soldier)and drawing blood with bright, chill light.

The difference in this poem is obvious; it makes use of several standard images of logic (ice, as in Hans Christian Andersen's "The Snow Queen"; notice also the war images, which are almost trite and cliched in their application to reason and logic).

Caveats

For a rough introduction to my philosophy of blogging, including the Code of Amiability I try to follow on this weblog, please read my fifth anniversary post. I consider blogging to be a very informal type of publishing - like putting up thoughts on your door with a note asking for comments. Nothing in this weblog is done rigorously: it's a forum to let my mind be unruly, a place for jottings and first impressions. Because I consider posts here to be 'literary seedings' rather than finished products, nothing here should be taken as if it were anything more than an attempt to rough out some basic thoughts on various issues. Learning to look at any topic philosophically requires, I think, jumping right in, even knowing that you might be making a fool of yourelf; so that's what I do. My primary interest in most topics is the flow and structure of reasoning they involve rather than their actual conclusions, so most of my posts are about that. If, however, you find me making a clear factual error, let me know; blogging is a great way to get rid of misconceptions.